Sushi Poisoning Reminder That Food System Needs Overhaul

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Eating a spicy tuna roll shouldn’t
make you sick. Nor should eating cantaloupe, cold cuts, peanut
butter or onions, all of which were linked to food poisoning
that sickened and killed people in the U.S. within the past five
years.

Reports last week of a salmonella outbreak, possibly
related to sushi, serve as a timely reminder of why the Obama
administration must expedite a plan to modernize the country’s
food-safety regulations, which haven’t been updated since the
Great Depression.

So far, more than 100 people in 19 states have been
stricken, all by an unusual strain of the bacteria known as
salmonella Barielly. No deaths have been reported. Many of those
who fell ill told health officials they had eaten sushi in
recent days, though tracing the source of food poisoning is
often difficult.

There’s a chance that if sushi were the culprit, the Food
Safety Modernization Act would have prevented it. Passed two
years ago with wide bipartisan support, the law is designed to
stop food contamination at the source, not simply react to
incidences of food-borne illness. The deadline for issuing the
rules to implement the law was Jan. 4, pending a review of the
regulations by the Office of Management and Budget.

Overseas Suppliers

The law would focus on four broad areas, one of which is
the establishment of a more efficient system for testing,
monitoring and verifying imported foods. U.S. inspectors also
would collaborate with foreign suppliers. Much of the food now
shipped to the U.S. enters the supply chain untested, and
sometimes from unknown sources. About 80 percent of the sushi
sold in the U.S. comes from overseas suppliers.

Other parts of the law are intended to enhance the safety
of processed foods, animal food and fresh produce.

There are about 48 million cases of food poisoning in the
U.S. each year and as many as 3,000 deaths. Although the
incidence of food poisoning hasn’t increased much, the virulence
of individual episodes is on the rise, particularly from fresh
produce, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Last
year, cantaloupe tainted by Listeria was responsible for 30
deaths, the most lethal case of food poisoning in U.S. history.

Because the country’s food supply is increasingly
concentrated among a handful of large producers and
distributors, the potential for mass poisonings is growing. Some
of the 50,000 food-processing plants in the U.S. go as long as a
decade without being inspected.

The Obama administration was a strong supporter of more
stringent regulation following the outbreak of salmonella from
tainted peanut butter in 2009, so the delay in putting the law
in place is troubling. Perhaps the bureaucratic wheels are
turning slower than usual; perhaps the White House doesn’t want
to be accused of adding “job-killing regulations” in an
election year.

The OMB is confronting a math problem: Carrying out the law
would require additional funding for the Food and Drug
Administration, the agency that drafted the rules and would be
charged with overseeing and enforcing the law. With little
support in Washington for increasing spending, the OMB is
searching for ways to offset the agency’s need for more money.

As an alternative to paying for the FDA’s increased
workload through the federal budget, the Obama administration
proposed imposing so-called user fees of $220 million on an
industry with more than $1 trillion in sales. Those fees would
require Congressional approval. Though the amount seems
comparatively trivial, the food industry opposes them and they
stand little chance of passage.

Contamination Costs

Food-borne illness costs the U.S. as much as $77 billion a
year in medical treatment, lost productivity and reduced sales
of products implicated in contamination episodes, according to
an analysis by a former FDA economist. The expense of the
tainted peanut butter recall and subsequent decline in demand
alone cost the industry an estimated $1 billion.

The food industry would prefer that the costs of more
vigilant regulation fall to the American taxpayer. But in light
of the harm that food poisoning causes to victims, the economy
and the industry itself, the Obama administration should press
forward with building support for user fees. The food industry
should relent and back them. After all, many manufacturers
supported the legislation before anyone thought of asking them
to pay for making it work.

Read more online from Bloomberg View.

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